Searching for Pancakes in the Palace

Episode 5 - The Exodus from Russia

The next morning was just breakfast, packing and checking out,
and Dmitri and Sergey picked us up at 11:00 to take us to the
airport. We bid them goodbye and thanked them, particularly Sergey
for making our Russian experience a wonderful one.

The airport was very interesting. The terminal was small, and
there were four doors leading from the outer room inside. The doors
had a large electronic sign over them with flight information, and
Sergey told us that you can't enter the doors until your flight
appears on the board with numbers indicating which check-in desk to
go to. We had about an hour to wait, so we sat in a lounge area in
the outer room until our flight appeared on the board. We noticed
signs that said that there were 4 steps we had to go through:
Security Control, Check-in, Passport control, and Security Control
again. After entering one of the 4 doors, we went through the usual
security control. Bags through the X-ray, and people through the
metal detectors. The difference was that we didn't have to remove
our shoes, but the guards used a metal detector wand on everybody
after we went through the metal detector.

Inside security control was a big room with the walls lined with
numbered check-in desks. We had to wait for the desk for our flight
to be announced and then we waited on line and checked-in. We then
had to go through passport control. Sergey told us that unlike most
countries, where you must have a passport in order to enter the
country, in Russia you must also have a valid passport to leave.
The passport control officers were much more thorough than in other
countries, even the US. They checked their computers for what
seemed to be a long time, they carefully perused the passports,
they stared at our faces. I also noticed that they had lines drawn
on the transparent partitions separating us from them that they
could use to tell them our height, and there were mirrors arranged
so they could see if we had anything behind us. We made it through
passport control uneventfully however, and found ourselves in a
small area with some duty-free shops. Donnie shopped for a few
small last-minute gifts and I bought some Russian chocolate to try
(we tried it later on the plane. It wasn't very good). We then
discovered that we had to go through another level of security
check, and we were not allowed to enter the door until our flight
appeared on another electronic board. When our flight appeared, we
were let in, and this time the security check was more thorough.
Shoes off, belt off, everybody was patted down. Women by a female
guard, men by a man. One young woman who was wearing skin-tight
jeans and a skin-tight t-shirt was still patted down by the female
guard, even though there was no possibility of her hiding anything
under her clothes. Donnie was stopped and asked to open her
carry-on bags, even though my bags had all the electronics. We got
through the second security check and found ourselves in a very
small room, with maybe 50 seats which was the gate waiting area for
4 gates! It was jammed and every seat was taken! Eventually two
seats became available and we waited for our flight. The gate doors
led outside to a bus, which took us to the plane. We boarded our
flight to Copenhagen and bid goodbye to Russia.

One scary event occurred on the flight. The flight attendants
were handing out soft drinks and snacks (which you had to buy) and
were about 10 rows back from the front of the plane and a few rows
away from us, when the plane encountered some turbulence and
starting bumping around. We had experienced this before, but
suddenly the whole plane tilted sharply to the right, maybe 30
degrees, and seemed to be dropping. Several people had to hold onto
their seats, and the flight attendant had to sit on somebody's
arm-rest and grab a chair back. The tilt and drop lasted only a few
seconds, but it was very scary and even the flight attendant looked
unnerved. Several people in the rows ahead of us were wearing their
beverages. The flight attendants had to come around with a roll of
paper towels. After that we got our beverages and were carefully
holding them and only pouring about 1/2 inch at a time into the
plastic cups.

The rest of the fight was uneventful, and we landed at
Copenhagen airport, which turned out to be one of the most
beautiful airports we have seen. We didn't have time to look around
or take pictures because we only had 55 minutes to change planes,
and we had to go through passport control and security again. We
made our connecting flight and eventually arrived in Amsterdam, got
our bags, met the driver that our travel agent had arranged to take
us to our hotel and got to our hotel about 6:00 in the evening.